the life of the culprit.  Sir Thomas Cusack, writing to Cecil, March 22, 1564, says, ’I persuaded O’Neill to forget the matter, whereby no more talk should grow of it; seeing there is no law to punish the offender other than by discretion and imprisonment, which O’Neill would little regard except the party might be executed by death, and that the law doth not suffer.  So as the matter be wisely pacified, it were well done to leave it.’  Shane was probably aware that Smith was but an instrument, who would be readily sacrificed as a peace-offering.

The sketch which Mr. Froude gives of Ulster and its wild sovereign at this time is admirably picturesque.  ’Here then, for the present, the story will leave Shane safely planted on the first step of his ambition, in all but the title, sole monarch of the North.  He built himself a fort on an island in Lough Neagh, which he called Foogh-ni-gall, or, Hate of Englishmen, and grew rich on the spoils of his enemies, the only strong man in Ireland.  He administered justice after a paternal fashion, permitting no robbers but himself; when wrong was done he compelled restitution, or at his own cost redeemed the harm “to the loser’s contentation.”  Two hundred pipes of wine were stored in his cellars; 600 men-at-arms fed at his table, as it were his janissaries; and daily he feasted the beggars at his gate, saying, it was meet to serve Christ first.  Half wolf, half fox, he lay couched in his Castle of Malepartuis, with his emissaries at Rome, at Paris, and at Edinburgh.  In the morning he was the subtle pretender to the Irish throne; in the afternoon, when the wine was in him, he was a dissolute savage, revelling in sensuality with his unhappy countess, uncoupled from her horseboy to wait upon his pleasure.  He broke loose from time to time to keep his hand in practice.  At Carlingford, for example, he swept off one day 200 sheep and oxen, while his men violated sixty women in the town; but Elizabeth looked away and endeavoured not to see.  The English Government had resolved to stir no sleeping dogs in Ireland till a staff was provided to chastise them if they would bite.  Terence Daniel, the dean of those rough-riding canons of Armagh, was installed as primate; the Earl of Sussex was recalled to England; and the new archbishop, unable to contain his exultation at the blessed day which had dawned upon his country, wrote to Cecil to say how the millennium had come at last, glory be to God!’

As a picture of Irish savage life this is very good.  But the historian has presented a companion picture of English civilised life, which is not at all inferior.  Sir Thomas Wroth and Sir Nicholas Arnold were sent over to reform the Pale.  They were stern Englishmen, impatient of abuses among their own countrymen, and having no more sympathy for Irishmen than for wolves.  In the Pale they found that peculation had grown into a custom; the most barefaced frauds had been converted by habit into rights:  and a captain’s commission